Assertion.
Is it a skill? Is it an attitude? Are we born assertive? Do we learn it as
children? Can we acquire it as adults? Most of the literature on assertion
assumes that people are unassertive because they don’t know how to be assertive—they lack the skill.
The assumption is that we can be taught
to be assertive with practice. Most assertiveness workshops use role-play, on
the premise that if you practice assertion in simulated situations, the
behaviors will be transferable to real events. Of course, practice can help
people discover the various ways of approaching a topic or person, but practice
may not be much help to the people who are shy or afraid to act unless they can
understand the underlying reason for this difficulty.
So,
the question to raise is, what makes some people too shy or too afraid to get
their needs met? Studies indicate that there is an inhibiting factor that prevents some people from being assertive.
Shy or fearful people do not feel entitled
to express their thoughts and feelings, make requests, or refuse the
requests of others. They have low self-esteem. They do not think that they are
good enough, smart enough, or attractive enough; they feel, therefore, that they
have no rights and perceive others as not granting them any rights.
Inhibition
is the inability to speak out or act on your own behalf, on behalf of others,
or on behalf of an idea or value system. Let us go a step further. What is the
basis for inhibition? It is the assumption that attempts to be assertive will meet
with a negative response and that this negative response matters. If you
predict a negative response but feel it does not matter, you won’t be
inhibited. But when it does matter to
you, the predicted negative response can so influence your behavior that you
are prevented from being assertive.
There
may be both rational and irrational components to inhibition. You may be
correct or incorrect in assuming that a particular assertive stance on your
part will result in negative consequences for you. There are a couple of ways
to check reality. One is to ask others. If no one else would be inhibited in
your place, then you can question the reality of your predictions of a negative
response. The other is to recall the ways your parents controlled you as a
child. Did they show their disapproval by anger, by tears, by indifference?
Does the potential of others’ anger, tears, or indifference still control your
behavior now? When you feel inhibited from being assertive, visualize the type
of negative response you predict your behavior will elicit. Does it remind you
of an earlier parental reaction? If you had a father who controlled you by
anger or even just by its threat, do you predict an angry response to your
attempts at meeting your needs? If your mother cried when you misbehaved, what
you fear most is hurting people?
Since
the inhibitor factor in assertion is often the displacement of early childhood
socialization patterns into the present, determine which people most inhibit
your assertiveness and try to identify what it is in them that reminds you of a
parent or teacher. It may be a look, a walk, a voice, an expression, an
attitude. You are attributing to a boss, a colleague, a subordinate, or a friend
a motive that once belonged to an authority figure that used to inhibit you.
Once you are able to identify this element, ask yourself, “Do I choose to be
inhibited by this person who in not my parent?” Chances are that similar
attributes in a variety of people will trigger this inhibition in you. I have
found that very cold, formal men remind me of my father, who was always quite
distant, and therefore others’ potential withdrawal can still control my
behavior.
Once
you have identified the pattern, chances are that whenever you meet it in
others it can still influence you, even though you are an adult. The only way
to deal with non-assertion is to keep looking for the pattern so that once you have
identified it, you are making your unconscious reactions conscious and
therefore more under your control.
Copyright © 2013. Natasha
Josefowitz. All rights reserved.
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